Newspaper historians will probably cite 2004 as the year that dailies around the globe took a look at themselves in the mirror, decided they were too big and cumbersome and—- like humans who decide to go on a diet—- made it a point to get smaller fast.
In Sweden, the nation’s three largest dailies converted to tabloid format after months of preparation, which required that all three dailies plan advertising strategies in unison.
On Tuesday, October 5, the: Goteborgs Posten (Goteborg), Dahens Nyheter (Stockholm) and Sydsvenska Dagbladet (Malmo) appeared in smaller formats, the final step in a size-change evolution that began, in the case of the Goteborgs Posten, two years ago as the third section became a tabloid; only last year the second section went tab, and, with the readers wondering why the GP had not done it all at once, this week the entire newspaper is a tabloid for the first time in its 146-year history.
Garcia Media accompanied the GP team in all of its design changes of the past 11 years, making three to four visits yearly to this newsroom in Goteborg, Sweden’s second largest city. Working with art director Mats Widebrant, and project leader Per Andersson, we have now created a tabloid look that continues to be familiar to the traditional GP readers, but that allows for the smaller format to offer better visual surprises to the reader, not only on page one, but beyond.
I also worked with the advertising department and its director Anders Karlsson to reformat the classified section, and to make sure that full page ads and advertising generally could be displayed well in the new format.
The trend for newspapers to get smaller continues worldwide, a revolution that started when The Impendent (London) started doing dual broadsheet-tabloid publications on September 30, 2003, which was followed by The Times of London earlier this year, then by The Irish Independent, Die Welt (Germany) and Blick (Switzerland). In addition, two other European daily broadsheets De Standaard (Brussels) and Het Parool (Holland) converted to tabloid formats sidestepping the dual publication strategy, both with great success even among the most traditional readers.
We will see more conversions in the months ahead, but, Sweden can almost be
termed, like Spain, a total tabloid territory.
For the Goteborgs Posten, the day finally arrived!